Tina lived to tell about it, but Ed never got out.

Just two more Sept. 11 stories from the World Trade Center, and two more reasons to drive the mission of Dr. Beth Loy, a West Virginia University researcher who recently landed a $450,000 grant to help companies come up with evacuation plans to better address the needs of employees with disabilities.

Loy is a clinical assistant professor at the WVU -based International Center for Disability Information (ICDI), the advocacy organization that will manage the three-year grant from the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

These plans have to take everyone, absolutely everyone, into account,Loy said.More people might have been able to get out that day (Sept. 11). We have to be able to accommodate every single worker.

Accommodationis the watch-word, Loy said. At WVU , Loys ICDI colleagues oversee operation of its highly successful Job Accommodation Network, or JAN , as it is known nationwide.

JAN provides counseling and consulting services to companies employing workers with disabilities. JAN helps those companies retool their workplaces to accommodate employees with physical, psychological and cognitive impairments.

The service is free, and JAN averages about 30,000 telephone calls a year. In 2001, the year of the terror attacks, no less than 5 million people had logged onto its Web site.

JAN also goes beyond the workplace to look at infrastructure and evacuation. Its consultants can also help companies, transportation systems and the owners of residential complexes craft evacuation plans that take people with disabilities into account.

The collective effort between WVU and the national institute will be known as Project Safe EV-ACand that work, Loy said, has a way to go.

Some companies have good, solid plans,Loy said,and some dont. It isnt always consistent.

That inconsistency was never more apparent, she said, than in the twin towers of the World Trade Center, on a September morning in lower Manhattan three years ago that began with a sky that couldnt have been bluer.

It was an inconsistency that turned out to be a matter of life and death for the above-mentioned Tina and Ed.

Tina, who is employed by the Port Authority of New York, was already at her job on the 68 th floor, as was Ed, a Blue Cross representative who was in his office 40 floors below.

The Port Authority had provided Tina, a wheelchair user, with a special evacuation chair for emergencies, and that chair saved her life. Her co-workers used it to carry her down 68 flights of stairs.

But no such provisions had been made for Ed and his wheelchair, and he would die that dayeven though his office was closer to the ground floors of the buildings under siege.

Thats what makes even more sad and frustrating,said Dr. Richard Walls, the director of WVU s ICDI organization.Thats why were going to make things better. I keep thinking of the people who couldnt run that day.